{"id":108921,"date":"2023-11-28T18:05:48","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T16:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=108921"},"modified":"2023-11-28T11:08:15","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T09:08:15","slug":"04-05-92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=108921","title":{"rendered":"We Are Not Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>We Are Not Alone<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

ARMIN ROSEN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Family members of Israeli hostages held by Hamas pray at the Ohel, the resting place of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, in Queens, New York, Nov. 13, 2023 \/ CHAIIM TUITO\/CHABAD<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\nVisitors to the Rebbe\u2019s tomb ask Hashem for help, while those davening to the golden calf of D.C. politics get spurned<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
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It took four full buses to bring the Israelis from the airport, and when their jet-lagged procession of anguish arrived at the cemetery on Monday evening a Jew living on the opposite end of the world could at last see the front line of our people\u2019s six weeks of misery, right here in New York City. They had traveled to a cemetery in the Cambria Heights section of eastern Queens because everything else had been tried already: a monthlong military operation, fevered international diplomacy, marches, media appearances, a global postering campaign. Still their loved ones remained in Hamas captivity. It was time to come to the Ohel, the resting place of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Ohel is an open-roofed frame of stark granite wall, located directly beneath an approach path to nearby Kennedy Airport, anteroom to the lesser, physically reachable sector of the heavens. A visitor is already in a mindset of bodies and souls in an unreal transit through the upper reaches of space, but this was not a night where great feats of spiritual imagination would be needed. Inside the stone rectangle a rabbi read out a prayer for the hostages, which boomed from a loudspeaker across a snaking line of faces streaked in silent tears. And then he read the names\u2014so many Dorons, Yuvals, and Daniels, the names of 85-year-old Yaffa Adar and 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, an unreal enormity of names. When the name of a loved one rang out across the darkness an \u201camen\u201d would issue from somewhere in line. \u201cThe interesting thing is to see the people coming here from the communities, to show we\u2019re not alone,\u201d Ohad Weiss, whose father was murdered defending his home in Kibbutz Be\u2019eri on Oct. 7, and whose 65-year-old mother\u2019s body was found near Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip three days after the visit to the Ohel, told me later when I asked what had been most powerful about his time at the Rebbe\u2019s grave. \u201cSo they can see it\u2019s real,\u201d his brother Daniel added, the \u201cit\u201d containing the entire tragedy. \u201cIt\u2019s not a movie. It\u2019s not more words.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Of course there are\u00a0tzaddikim<\/em>\u00a0closer to home at whose tomb the families could have prayed if they were so inclined\u2014there is an irony in leaving Eretz Yisrael to plead assistance from God. And a lot of the hostage families, which first assembled inside a tent on the edge of the complex of shedlike corrugated metal halls and prayer spaces adjoining the Ohel, did not seem like pleading-to-God types. On Oct. 7, Hamas struck secular kibbutzim and a music festival taking place on Shabbat; consequently, the families of the hostages were a group largely composed of bald heads and short beards, puffer jackets and pink knockoff Yankees caps, the people who fill a tourist\u2019s peripheral vision in an Israeli shopping mall or bus station. When most didn\u2019t sing along to \u201cKol Ha-Olam Kulo<\/em>\u201d\u2014a musical setting for a notable quotation of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the one about how the whole world is a narrow bridge and the important thing is not to fear\u2014they began to look especially puzzled and dazed, as if finding themselves the guests of some far-flung community of Hasids further confirmed a dreadful rupture in reality. But the Hasids had offered to help repair that rupture, both through giving the families a chance to pray at their Rebbe\u2019s tomb and by opening up whatever opportunities for advocacy or awareness-raising came from being in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Their loved ones remained in Hamas captivity. It was time to come to the Ohel, the resting place of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several times a week over a period of 40 years, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky told the families and the assorted Chabadniks and media rubberneckers packing the tent to the fringes, the Rebbe would come to this cemetery with stacks of letters from people in need of help. \u201cHe would read them one by one, and pray to Hashem to heal their broken hearts,\u201d said the 89-year-old Krinksy, the Rebbe\u2019s former secretary, driver, and all-around assistant. \u201cMillions of tears have been shed right here on this spot, and prayers to the heavens have floated up from this place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of the hostage families, who are truly hostages themselves, took a while to face the paper, pen, and clipboard placed at every chair, but they all eventually wrote something. Platters of rugelach, speared kabab-style, went almost untouched, as did the tanks of coffee. As the families filed out of the tent with their notes, a rabbi reminded them, in Hebrew: This is not Yom Kippur, but, as it happens, Rosh Chodesh. As hard as it may seem, one must come to the Rebbe today in a spirit of\u00a0simcha<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And indeed a flickering and unlikely joy awaited on the sidewalk outside the tent, where well-wishers, nearly all of them in long skirts or\u00a0tzitzit<\/em>, filled every inch of the 100-odd yards to the cemetery entrance and the Ohel itself. Calls rang out: \u201cBe strong. Hashem is with you!\u201d \u201cChazakim chaverim!<\/em>\u201d \u201cAnachnu etchem!<\/em>\u201d \u201cEtcha b\u2019lev!<\/em>\u201d Strangers wept and embraced.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A hip-looking young man, a barista from Herzliya, emerged from a long hug, a deep and profound smile still carved into his face. Amir Shem Tov\u2019s younger brother, 21-year-old Omer Shem Tov, attended the Nova music festival and was last seen alive in a video recorded on Oct. 7, tied up in the back of a truck. \u201cAt these times anything helps\u2014anything, anything,\u201d Amir told me, the repetition sounding out a fresh and still-welling pain. \u201cI\u2019m not much of a believer myself but anything helps \u2026 if you pray, it could help. You don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The interior of the Ohel is a frame of narrow corridor surrounding a trench beneath a knee-level wall. The trench contains the memorial stones for the Rebbe and his father-in-law, along with an endlessly undulating wave of notes vast enough to block any view of the Rebbe\u2019s actual gravesite. A visitor to the Rebbe is supposed to tear up their note and cast it into the waiting void. The family members would take one last look at their messages, destroy them, and then release the fragments into the paper swells at the Rebbe\u2019s feet. It turned out each name being read over the loudspeaker corresponded to an individual sheet of paper bearing that name, which was then ripped apart a second later, as if the name itself were a prayer. There was trembling and crying and almost total silence, aside from ripping paper and the roll call of the kidnapped.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I had the feeling of being physically squeezed and mentally scrambled\u2014a true holy site is always something unexpected, existing squarely within the unpredictability of real life and inducing the confusion of anything else that hasn\u2019t been planned with any excessive, deadening meticulousness. An urge to stay and an urge to leave are equally legitimate. The real outcome of a visit, as with a host of other meaningful human actions, may never fully be understood. \u201cAll right,\u201d I heard one of the more secular-looking family members say after about a minute of surveying this tight human concentration of tearing and reading and shuckling back and forth. \u201cHow do I get out of here?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Outside of the Ohel, next to metal shelves packed with hundreds of memorial candles, I ran into Amir Shem Tov. I wondered about the living people who were bearing the absolute worst of the war against us, somewhere under Gaza City. Is there anything you\u2019d want the world to know about your brother? I asked Amir. He paused for a moment. \u201cWe call him the sunshine now,\u201d he finally said. \u201cHe makes everybody laugh. He wants to be a music producer, and I hope it comes true. He makes music for everybody. The whole world will hear it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cShe is a wonderful person\u2014kind,\u201d Daniel said of his mother, Yehudit. \u201cShe is a very powerful woman.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Chabad Hasids and a great many others, the Ohel is a unique locus of connection between Hashem and His people. The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America oversee a less tangible communal access point to a more corporate higher power: They have the working relationships, financial resources, and operational know-how to summon tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of Jews to Washington, D.C., capital of the waning earthly sovereign, on less than three week\u2019s notice. The Nov. 14 March for Israel, which began about 13 hours after that visit to the Ohel, required jumbotrons and police barriers and acres of interlocking plastic floors\u2014permits had to be obtained, and thousands of buses had to be hired and paid for. And then the lineup had to be assembled, an inoffensive mix of acceptably left and right politicians, communal leaders, pundits and entertainers speaking within an agreed-to set of talking points aimed at creating an appearance\u2014and,\u00a0b\u2019ezrat<\/em>\u00a0Hashem, the reality\u2014of communal influence.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI didn\u2019t look at the schedule. I came for Am Yisrael,\u201d Ellie Shain, a young Lakewooder who recognized me from a long-ago Rosh Hashanah in Uman, said at Lafayette Park in front of the White House, moments after a mass\u00a0Shacharit<\/em>\u00a0wrapped up. This was a wise attitude. Seeing the march as an empowering and inspiring assertion of American Jewish communal existence means paying relatively little attention to what was actually said onstage.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jews voted in great numbers for Joe Biden and remain some of the most loyal and financially generous members of the Democratic coalition. It is therefore astonishing, something just short of an open insult, and maybe an admission of deep internal ambivalence that the only Biden administration official to address the largest political gathering of Jews in American history was Deborah Lipdstadt, the State Department\u2019s antisemitism envoy, a career academic far below the senior decision-making echelon of the Biden White House and someone whose portfolio doesn\u2019t really involve Israel or American domestic affairs. \u201cThis government stands shoulder-to-shoulder against Jew hatred,\u201d Lipstadt announced. Alas, in contrast, \u201cThere are countries fostering hatred of Jews,\u201d she said later in the speech. \u201cNo doubt about it!\u201d She was careful not to name any countries in particular. On the exact day of the rally, the Biden administration\u00a0renewed a sanctions waiver<\/a>\u00a0that had the effect of releasing $10 billion held in escrow in Iraq to the Iranian regime.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The only government official to mention Iran was Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, in a blink-and-you-miss-it reference to \u201cIran-backed Hamas.\u201d Milken Institute Associate Director Arielle Mokhtarzadeh\u2019s statement that Oct. 7 internationalized the war the Islamic Republic launched against Iran\u2019s Jews in 1979, like pastor John Hagee\u2019s mentions of Hezbollah\u2014the only ones of the day, incidentally\u2014felt downright off-message.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIsrael, we will not rest until you get the assistance you need!\u201d exclaimed Chuck Schumer in a topically updated rehash of a speech he has given once every month or two for the past 30 years. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries listed a roll call of countries that had expelled their Jews, meaning that Swiss antisemitism came in for more criticism than Qatar\u2019s sheltering of the Hamas high command, or its global promotion of anti-Jewish poison. In fact, Qatar wasn\u2019t mentioned at all, by anyone. \u201cIt is unacceptable for Hamas apologists to accost and assault Jewish students on campus,\u201d said greenhorn Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson without making a single policy suggestion\u2014such as, perhaps, withholding federal funding from universities that tolerate or promote the harassment of their Jewish students.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A wander through the crowd on the Mall argued for the practical necessity of whatever political truce had governed the march\u2019s content. The mutually reinforcing Jewish communal wings of the Democratic Party establishment had a visible presence: \u201cStop terror, protect civilians, pursue peace\u201d read J Street\u2019s branded sign, spotted only intermittently; \u201cThank you Biden!\u201d announced the much more numerous placards of the Democratic Majority for Israel. Statements in sympathy with the suffering of Palestinian civilians were met with general applause.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the most affecting outward announcements of a person\u2019s orientation had no political content, similar to how the emotional apex of the nearly three-hour rally,\u00a0a mass singalong<\/a>\u00a0to the Maccabeats\u2019 recitation of the over 1,100-year-old\u00a0Acheinu<\/em>\u00a0prayer for the return of Jewish captives, wasn\u2019t really pitched toward any specific human decision-maker. I spotted a middle-aged man in a Temple Emanu-El softball team jersey, Cincinnatians in matching neon T-shirts, packs of Wolverines for Israel, an entire dormitory\u2019s worth of Columbia students, backpacks with words like \u201cKohelet Yeshiva High School-Torah for the real world\u201d on them, a Yeshiva University junior collecting donations for something called Operation Torah Shield 3 in an orange bucket (it turned out to be an upcoming student mission to Israel to assist internal refugees), gaggles of teenage girls in matching seminary sweaters, jackets from the Monsey fire department, the very occasional family of black-hat Hasids.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There was even a\u00a0peyosed<\/em>\u00a0young man wearing a Friends of the IDF hat. It was important to be here, Ellie, a Sanzer Hasid told me, \u201cbecause together we\u2019re something, together we\u2019re strong \u2026 If I want my grandkids to be safe in America we need to fight now.\u201d His brother moved to Israel, currently serves as a tank driver in the IDF, and had once been the rare American Hasidic lone soldier, a scarce phenomenon in light of Haredi Judaism\u2019s religious opposition to Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land prior to the coming of\u00a0Moshiach<\/em>. \u201cThey\u2019re double lonely soldiers\u2014from their country and their community,\u201d Ellie told me. But maybe not so lonely for long. After the White House\u00a0Shacharit<\/em>, a beaming Hasid clutched a small Israeli flag to his chest within a joyful swirl of dancing day schoolers, YU students, and yeshiva floor-hockey alumni. Since Oct. 7, it was not uncommon to see a\u00a0chassun<\/em>, a new husband, go to the first dance after his\u00a0chassuna<\/em>\u00a0with an Israeli flag in hand, Yaakov from New Square told me.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Was the God of Israel successfully enjoined at the Rebbe\u2019s grave in Queens, and were our even more immediate powers moved at the sight of 290,000 supporters of Israel on a gorgeous autumn day in D.C.? Hashem has the lead so far: On Nov. 15, the day after the rally, the Biden administration declined to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses in the Gaza Strip, a move that legitimizes the U.N.\u2019s pitched campaign to end the war on terms more favorable to Hamas and its Iranian sponsors than to Israel and the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, it would take an almost misanthropic excess of cynicism to declare the rally a failure, even if it was barely covered by\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>. The people who have the final say on what the day really meant are the Jewish people, which is to say all of us. In the midst of a living nightmare, we merged into a crowd of historic proportions to prove to ourselves that we actually aren\u2019t insane or adrift, and if our own help, along with the often mysterious aid of Hashem, is all we are likely to receive, it\u2019s also all that we will actually need.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The morning of the rally, not long after\u00a0Shacharit<\/em>, I met American University student Tomer Ben Ezer at a Dunkin\u2019 Donuts packed with flag-toting college kids. On Friday, Ben Ezer had found a flyer for his senior piano recital in a practice studio, a picture of which he shared with me, with the words \u201cDeath to the Zionists Hitler was right\u201d scrawled around a picture of his face, which\u2014unlike the faces of the other performers\u2014had been stabbed off.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m smiling now but I didn\u2019t sleep the whole weekend,\u201d said Ben Ezer, who explained that the university had shown little concern about the incident, and that he\u2019d had to contact law enforcement on his own, with no help from his school. Since the war began, he had been spat on five times on campus and called a fascist and racist. American University had failed him, but perhaps over the next few hours he could feel as if his people hadn\u2019t failed him.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Aryeh Schwartz wore a T-shirt with the flying snake icon of the IDF paratrooper division, in which his brother serves. Like Ellie the Sanzer Hasid, Schwartz, a Washington-based photographer, had come to the march with future generations in mind. \u201cI have a young child,\u201d he told me after the rally, as the evening shadows swallowed the museum exteriors on Madison Drive. \u201cI\u2019m not gonna raise him in a world where he\u2019s afraid to be himself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis has been very refreshing,\u201d Jonathan, a flag-draped Toronto college student, told me moments after the rally ended. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve felt safe in a month.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Perry, a woman who had driven a car full of friends up from the Brooklyn Frumkheit stronghold of Borough Park, waved over her friend Sarah, another religious woman in her late 20s in an almost floor-length skirt. \u201cHow many duffel bags have you sent to Israel already?\u201d Perry asked. \u201cOver 200,\u201d she replied. \u201cI\u2019d show you but my phone died.\u201d Perry brought up the picture: Rows of loaf-shaped payloads stretched in front of a Kennedy Airport baggage desk, each one with a Magen David outlined in neon electrical tape. The duffels were stuffed with supplies for evacuees from northern and southern Israel. People send Amazon packages to Sarah, who then assembles the bags and attends to their delivery to the airport. No one had told her to do this. She had needed nobody\u2019s help.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Armin Rosen<\/strong> is a staff writer for Tablet Magazine.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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We Are Not Alone ARMIN ROSEN Family members of Israeli hostages held by Hamas pray at the Ohel, the resting place of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, in Queens, New York, Nov. 13, 2023 \/ CHAIIM TUITO\/CHABAD Visitors to the Rebbe\u2019s tomb ask Hashem for help, while those davening to the golden calf of D.C. politics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108921"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108939,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108921\/revisions\/108939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}